Multimedia Message Service (MMS) is a new global message communication standard established by two industrial standard organizations, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Forum and 3GPP (3G Partnership Project). The advantage of MMS is to support multimedia functionality, which allows MMS, including text, image, video, animation, audio etc. to be transmitted. MMS has greatly improved the information capability compared with the short message, has enriched the user's experience. MMS is and will be a new profit increase point for network operation providers and service providers.
Designed running on the layer above WAP protocol, MMS does not depend on any concrete network platform, and can be provided by any network platform supporting WAP protocol. Thus, MMS can support HSCSD (High Speed Circuit Switched Data), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), GSM EDGE (Enhanced Data rata for GSM Evolution, and UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication Systems), and this running platform-independent feature can greatly protect the investment of operators.
FIG. 1 simply shows the message structure of MMS, wherein MMS includes MMS head and MMS body. The MMS head includes the information on how to send the MMS from source to target, such as source address, object address, etc. The MMS body includes a plurality of sections, such as media object, presentation section, etc. with media object including image, text, audio, and selectable presentation section, with each object occupying an individual section, while the presentation section includes the instructions of how to provide multimedia content.
There is a plurality of types of computer presentation languages in the prior arts to show the presentation. A presentation language often used by those skilled in the art is SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language). Proposed by W3C in June, 1998 and designed specially for stream multimedia, SMIL is based on the XML, and arranges audio, media, text, and image in sequence by arranging the time sequence. SMIL is often used to deploy a multimedia message presentation language, and is an important method to integrate multimedia to Web content, in which XML language can be used for the timing of a multimedia presentation, to link super link and media object, and to define the screen layout. SMIL is recognized as the method for enriching current message transfer technology based on text. SMIL language comprises a set of modules, and defines semantic information and syntax for a particular function area, such as layout module, timing module, synchronization module and cartoon module.
It is known from the above MMS body structure that the MMS is defined as a kind of message to be delivered to user using text, picture, video, etc. With the popularization of MMS, a lot of content providers communicate with their users by encapsulating their applications into MMS, such as an application of advertisement delivery service based on MMS, a chat room based on MMS, etc. But an important issue for these applications is that there is no communication syntax information to describe the relationship among MMSs. For example, when a supermarket would like to deliver discount information to customers, all the messages must be packaged into one package. If the discount information changes a little, all the information, including changed information and unchanged information, must be re-packaged and re-delivered by the MMS system, since it is not possible for the MMS system to only deliver changed information, which leads to too much information being delivered repeatedly and too much message flux in the network reducing the efficiency of MMS system.
Meanwhile, WAP-Push technology is used in MMS, which is similar to the storing and delivering function for short messages. Thus, the current MMS technology is essentially a technology of first storing then delivering, which means that when an MMS is sent by a sender, it is not received by the receiver directly, but is received by the MMS center of the network of the sender first, then the MMS center sends a notification to notify the receiver to download the message.
For many current MMS applications developed by service providers, the efficiency of this sending and receiving mechanism of WAP-push technology based MMS is very low. The detailed illustration will be given below based on FIG. 2.
FIG. 2 simply shows the current MMS sending and receiving implementing system without roaming, here only the components which lead to low efficiency of MMS application system and relate to the MMS sending and receiving are listed. Other components, such as MMS gateway, providing communication interface for MMS center 202 and back-end application server, are not listed. In FIG. 2, the sender is an application 228, and the receiver is a client device 216 comprising WAP protocol stack 220, short message sender and receiver 222, Message Display 224 and Message storage 226. Application 228 sends the MMS to the MMS Client Receiver 216 via MMS sender 200 and Radio Transmitting Tower 214. FIG. 3 will illustrate the current MMS sending and receiving process in detail. In MMS sender 200, the components related to MMS sending and receiving comprise: MMS center 202, Short Message (SM) Center 210, and wireless WAP gateway associated to MMS center 202. Here the MMS center 202 is the core unit for MMS processing among all components in MMS sender 200, which not only provides support for MMS storage and operation but also provides flexible addressing capability. MMS center 202 comprises MMS server 204 for processing MMS, Notification Short Message Service (SMS) sender 206 and MMS storage.
FIG. 3 illustrates the existing process wherein application 228 sends the MMS and MMS client 216 receives MMS. In FIG. 3, the application prepares an MMS for sending in step S301; application 228 sends the MMS to MMS center 202 in step S303; MMS center 202 receivers the MMS, transforms it into MIME format and then stores it into MMS storage 208 in step S305. Steps S301, S303 and S305 hereinbefore are the preparing work for sending an MMS, they are called preparing steps for sending an MMS, hereinafter. Then MMS center 202 prepares to send the MMS to MMS client Receiver 216 using WAP-push, that is, it notifies SMS center 210 to send a notification SMS in step S307 and the SMS center sends a notification SMS in step S309, In this way, a process for sending an MMS is implemented. Next is the process for MMS client receiver 216 to receive an MMS. MMS client receiver 216 receives a notification SMS in step S311, and builds a WAP connection to send a request including the MMS storage address URL to the MMS center 202 for acquiring the MMS via WAP gateway 212 in step S313. The MMS center 202 sends the MMS to MMS client receiver 216 via the same connection in step S315. The MMS client receiver acknowledges success of receiving via the same WAP connection in step S317, after which the MMS center 202 notifies the sender application 228 that the MMS has been received in step S319. The MMS center 202 apprises the sender application 228 that the MMS has been sent, and the sender application 228 client displays “Message has been sent”. In this way, an MMS receiving process for MMS client receiver 216 has been implemented. For the convenience of later description, the combination of steps S313, S315, S317 and S319 are called the steps to receiving ordinary MMS.
It can be seen from the above MMS sending implementing process, that MMS center 202 does not send an MMS to MMS client receiver 216 directly, but sends a notification SMS to notify MMS client receiver 216 that an MMS is waiting for it. Unless the MMS is delivered to MMS client receiver 216 via WAP connection finally, the user does not know what MMS will be received. When the user sets up the MMS client receiver 216 as “pick-up immediately”, the MMS client receiver 216 will pick up MMS by itself, and then notify the sender “Message has been received.”
It is noted that the MMS receiving process is very complex, especially when the message size is small. The communication delay is correspondingly large.
In summary, there are two major reasons underlying the low efficiency of a current MMS system: too much information is sent repeatedly, which leads to a great deal of message flux on the one hand, and notification messages require additional communications on the other hand.